Friday iTunes iChing: Storms on Titan

I had a lovely Friday iTunes tarot reading nearly prepared last week when the competing Oracle of Firefox and Accidentally Closed Tabs prophesied doom and destruction for all my questions. So, now that the auspicious day of Friday is once again upon us, I’ll restate my question.

O Frabjous Oracle! We know that Saturn’s moon Titan has a hydrologic cycle, with liquid methane acting in place of water; methane is thought to have carved out drainage channels that look quite similar to those on Earth, and we have recently found lakes of it near the poles. But weather at the Huygens landing site is currently a downward-drifting methane mist or light drizzle, more or less like a smoggy winter’s day in Los Angeles. You don’t carve canyons with light drizzle.

Hueso and Sanchez-Lavega estimated the strength of storms that might arise on Titan, and found that they’re roughly equivalent to flash flood events on Earth. In the same issue of Nature, Tokano et al. point out that drizzle is likely an important, stable feature of Titan’s meteorology.

So how about it, iTunes? Can we have a weather forecast for Titan at the next Cassini flyby?